Swiss football club Grasshoppers Zurich is being sold to an investor from Hong Kong. The new head of Switzerland’s record champions is the wife of Guo Guangchang, whose Fosun Group already owns Wolverhampton Wanderers.
The best times of Grasshoppers Club Zurich (GCZ) are but a distant memory. The picture of the animal that gave the club its name still adorns the entrance of an expensive restaurant at Paradeplatz in Zurich's financial district, but for a club with long-standing connections to Credit Suisse, bankers only rarely are seen at the games.
The current owners, Merc-importer Peter Stueber and construction entrepreneur Stephan Anliker, can finally pass the buck for their expensive hobby: they have poured millions of francs into what is now a second division club to rich new owners, the club said in a statement on Thursday. The club didn't reveal how much money the new owners paid for their stake.
Owners of Wolverhampton Wanderers
Hong Kong-based Champion Union of Jenny Wang acquires 90 percent of the shares that Stueber and Anliker now own. Wang is the wife of Guo Guangchang, whose Fosun Group owns U.K.-based Wolverhampton Wanderers.
The new president of GCZ, Sky Sun, and the new manager of sport, Bernard Schuiteman, are both currently employed by the Wolves, a successful Premier League club. The current manager of sport at GCZ, Fredy Bickel, has been released. The ex-head of sports of Young Boys Bern, FC Zurich, and Rapid Vienna is one of the best-connected sports managers of Switzerland.
Back to Former Glory
The president of GCZ, András Gurovits, will stay on as a member of the board, together with Sun and Wang. They aim to lead the Grasshoppers back to former glory, according to the statement.
At Fosun Group, there is plenty of money available to make this happen. The conglomerate is active in banking, insurance, drug-making, and real estate and has annual sales of about 8 billion euros ($8.75 billion). The million needed to get Grasshoppers back into the first division won’t make too much of an impression on the accounts of Fosun Group, or Champion Union, as the company that actually bought the club is known.
There’s a Lot to Do
Making it happen will require quite a lot of effort and money. The leading clubs in Switzerland, Young Boys and FC Basel have shown how to go about managing a successful football club in Switzerland, which is a small football market in European terms. They have maintained a sustainable and long-term perspective while keeping rich investors (the Roche heirs in Basel and hearing aid-makers Rihs in Bern) as their back-up.
In Zurich, the club lacks a proper stadium for football, the supporter base has evaporated through the years of mismanagement and sponsors left after the wasteful use of money. The gap between the leading clubs and GCZ has grown rapidly.
If however the planned «Credit Suisse Arena» gets the final go-ahead and if the new owners are ready to stick to their investment for years, it isn’t excluded that the record champions can claw its way back to the top. For the moment, the new owners from Hong Kong will have to make do with games played against FC Chiasso, Kriens and Lausanne-Ouchy in front of a few hundred diehard supporters.
